Customer Reviews

Quicken 2003 for Mac

5 star:		(3)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(7)
2 star:		(4)
1 star:		(15)

 

 

I'm a switcher, moving from PC to Mac. I love Mac OS X, it's what made me switch. I'm disappointed in Quicken 2003 for the Mac. There's no direct import of PC data, you have to export things as .QIF files following a strict recipe. When I did that, I got whopping big numbers in my portfolios. I never knew I was a billionaire. It turns out there's some glitch that can be found by graphing the value of a stock and finding where the price skyrockets, then entering a real price for that day. There is also no Quicken 2003 for the Mac support page at Intuit yet. Lastly, there's a problem with the date entry fields where you only can see the year/month but no date. I have not tracked that down yet. Call it beta software, switch with care. Maybe wait for the next version.

This is my first Amazon review, but I just had to chime in with others who have used Quicken for 10+years now because I am so frustrated with this version. My entire financial life is in Quicken Mac, and I am SO unhappy that I upgraded to 2003. My 12MB file with the last 10+ years of my life (loans, investments, credit cards, rental properties, etc. -- probably one of the larger Quicken files around) is at risk. You can't go back once you upgrade. Save yourself the aggravation, and wait for something better than 2003, unless you really don't mind starting over from scratch if things get hosed.

I have a G4 and a PC. The two primary things I still do (only) on the Mac are Quicken and iPhoto, and I feel locked-in to both programs. However, I'm *very* seriously considering dumping Quicken 2003 for Mac and moving to the Quicken for Windows. I *never* thought I'd ever do that, but this version of Quicken continues to annoy me every time I use it. Worse, it is starting to make me question the validity of my data.

It crashes doing simple QuickReports (inexcusable), there are countless UI bugs like when hopping from one transaction to another or scrolling, there's no way to see the list of downloaded transactions once you've reconciled (as there was in previous versions), and loading my United Mileage Plus credit card transactions is more painful than ever as of Q2003: The browser link that Quicken launches is obsolete, meaning I have to manually log in. Then I have to manually enter the download dates, save to a .QFX file, and manually import that into Quicken (since downloading that file no longer auto-imports it into Quicken). In addition, it is darn near impossible to get some banking transactions to "match up" with entries I already have in my register. I've never been able to figure out why, but I end up accepting the downloaded transaction and deleting the one I entered (or one that was auto-entered as a scheduled transaction) because Quicken refuses to acknowledge that they're the same transaction. This is especially annoying for loan-related transactions. Investment tracking is also messed up. Capital gains reports are inaccurate (forcing me to re-enter everything manually in Excel at tax time) -- just moving shares from one brokerage to another resets the purchase date and throws off short/long term calculations. In addition, some of my mutual fund transactions seem to be missing (despite my reconciling each and every statement), leaving my Schwab register hopelessly unreconcileable. Finally, Quicken has NEVER handled employee stock option or employee stock purchase plan transactions (with the funky withholding that goes along with them) very well. I have to wonder if anyone at Intuit has ever tried to enter their own stock transactions.

Switching to Windows won't be easy or fun. Intuit's suggestion is to simply "export everything to QIF and re-import on the other side". However, there are so many things that don't export that you're guaranteed a mess after you import the QIF files (like account to account transactions, as I recall). I fear I'm going to have to write off my 10 years of data, maybe export my banking and credit card transactions (just to maintain the history), fudge the balances to get a good starting point, and then gradually start over. With over 50 active accounts, this will not be easy or fun and I resent having to waste the time to do it. The only plus is that I've tried to simplify my life and I won't have to bother entering old data from old (hidden) accounts that are no longer in use.

Intuit NEEDS to create a migration tool (Mac to Win or Win to Mac, as I've seen reviews from people who have tried to go either way) that seamlessly translates one format to the other without losing any data. In addition, a repair utility would be very welcome. With all of the crashes I've encountered, I'm sure there are problems in my data file. However, there is no way to validate or repair a Quicken file short of exporting and re-importing, and as already mentioned you're probably better off starting over from scratch.

I, too, have beta tested Quicken Mac in the past (and presented bugs to Intuit some of which were even fixed, as well as done user experience testing for Intuit), but this is a tough program to test with real-life data. The 2003 beta program (like other recent ones) required a one-way upgrade to the new format, and suggested that you keep both the old and new versions up to date with the same transactions. I couldn't understand HOW to do this when downloading online transactions (and especially with regard to making online payments), and they offered no help on the matter. So, I guess I partially blame myself for not being more active in this beta and providing more feedback. Somehow, I doubt it would've made a difference.

Adopting a program like this, for some of us, is a serious proposition. Not having a way out (e.g. migration to the presumably more stable and better maintained Windows version) is a real shame.

As a software engineer, I understand that deadlines are often more important (to a company with an annual release schedule) than quality and sometimes it means bugs are often deferred (or maybe not even found). It's unfortunate that that really seems to have been the case with Quicken Mac 2003.

I wish there was a more direct line of communication (for reporting and resolving bugs) with the company for those of us who are serious heavy-duty users of this software. If you're one of those people, you should avoid Quicken 2003 for Mac.

UPDATE 9/24/03: The early reports seem to indicate that Quicken Mac 2004 is no better than 2003. I've since purchased Quicken Windows 2004 and am trying to figure out just how much of my data I'm going to attempt to migrate (vs. leaving behind forever on the Mac). It all comes down to how much time I want to spend massaging, re-typing, and reconciling my transactions, one miserable account at a time...

I have 10,000 hours of pluging in Quicken transactions into various versions Quicken for the Mac. My computer is totally dedicated to TurboTax for mac and Quicken for mac because my Quicken file is more important than anything else in my life. I've run it on 5 different Macs over the many years and my investments go back to 1985. I got 2003 and immeadiatly updated the software to version R4. Don't know about bugs before R4 but 2003 R4 won't do net worth graphs or reports over a range. For example: Ask for a report of your net worth on 12/31 for the last 10 years and the amounts go into the stratosphere. It will calculate your net correctly if you only ask for one specific date. Just forget about graphing things over time. The program is screwed up. It must be adding everything together.

Otherwise, I have been able to continue as usual with all my pounding of data and so far it all seems correct. I havn't experienced any of the problems noted in these other messages but I haven't had to do some of those things.

My advise. WAIT. This version is screwed up. Don't buy it unless you have to in order to get to your bank or credit card or broker. My experience on that is that its too much trouble and not worth the gamble of screwing up your file. My file is too valuble to risk downloads of stupid transactions that I can enter myself exactly correct.

If I had read these reviews before I bought and loaded up 2003 I would NEVER EVER have even thought of doing it.

Go ahead though. Spin the revolver and put the gun to your head. I would wait until these reviews turn positive. Wait until R5 comes out. You know? 5th time is a charm...or was that "Third time is a charm" Anyway...wait for R5 on the websit at least.

If you don't understand what I mean by R4 and R5. You buy 2003 for the Mac and then they put patches and updates on the Intuit site for you to get. Everybody that buys 2003 has to first get the updates to off the internet to get going.

I have been using Quicken for Mac for the past 10 years. Early on it was a very solid, useful program. Unfortunatly, each release is more buggy than the last. Naive as I am, I would keep upgrading in the hope that the new version will somehow be stable, and will have taken care of bugs identified in previous versions. This time I upgraded to get Mac OS 10 native support. With the release of Quicken 2003 it is now clear that these folks just don't care. The program crashes several times during each use. It will crash if you try to change account information from within the expense entry form of the calendar. It will claim to not be able to find the account. Post crash you will see that it did know the account and did make the change. Many reports do not paint on the screen fully, chopping off about an inch down the report. The loan function does not work at all with Quicken randomly reassigning loan values from one loan to another. Sometimes when the program crashes it is unable to reopen the data file. You are then forced to work from an old back-up. Don't try to open a Quick Report if you already have one open -- it'll cause the program to crash. They recently released a R4 patch for the program. Naive that I am I downloaded and added the patch last night hoping against all hope that some bugs would be fixed. Nope -- Now instead of taking 2 seconds to load on a G4, it takes 115 seconds to load while the harddrive goes crazy. When you are sitting in front of a computer monitor waiting to get to work -- 115 seconds can seem like an eternity. I will never buy another Intuit product. I don't expect perfect, bugs happen, but I do expect that software would not be released with known bugs. There is no way I can concieve of the Quicken team not knowing about the many bugs in this product .. and then selling it to you anyway.

When Quicken first came out, it was simple, straightforward and rock solid. Over the years it has become more and more of everything except simple and rock solid. This is now a beast which rears its ugly head at all the worst moments.

If it has not crashed on you yet, it will one day. So what? Every application crashes once in a while, you say? Perhaps. But Quicken has a magical ability to take a crash and turn it into corrupted data. Once the data file has a little corruption in it everything just gets worse and worse. Crashes come more frequently and then suddenly a checking or credit card account tells you it is "out of balance" and a prior period needs to be re-reconciled. Ok, but when you try to do this it either will not let you or it appears in every way to be correct, but insists it is not. At that point the only way out involves significant reentry of data OR an expensive submission of your file to Intuit tech support for "cleaning." To top it all off, your confidence in your data is shaken badly. All you can think of is the possibility of ever needing to "redo the work again" another time.

I love the Quicken I remember, and this product probably still is that good until things go wrong. Once wronged, however, it is more than torturous to recover from.

If you proceed, and you probably will because Intuit has a virtual lock on the personal finance market, you must be careful to back up after EVERY session. Even more critical is the need to return to the last clean backup immediately IF your file EVER crashes. Do NOT ever continue to use a crashed file or you will be very sorry. Very sorry.

The truly disheartening fact is Intuit continues to sell us an application containing the same bugs in version after version. They add a handful of features each year to tempt us to part with another chunk of change, but we keep seeing the same pimples and quirks carried forward. Many of us update our copy each year not to get any new features, but in the hopes they actually fixed our least favorite bug. All too often they have not, but we keep hoping.

I've been using Quicken since it was invented (cir. 1988) - and version 1.0 that ran on my 8088 PC was better than this one. Not only were my files scrambled beyond repair when converting from Q-99, but electronic bill pay was totally scrambled. Intuit's help line was a little use - though they didn't charge me their hourly rate.
To make matters worse, once you start using '03, with Wells Fargo bank, I was *unable* to revert back to the old version. You're stuck!
Intuit came out with a patch, but it still doesn't fix irritating bugs like windows being resized and moved on each startup, and the "customize reports" pane is chopped off halfway (I'm serious - this is a glaring bug!).
I'm w-a-y dissapointed in Intuit that they'd release such a buggy piece of software.

I rate Quicken 2003/Mac lower than 1. I've used Quicken for PC since 1993 and conversion was a nightmare.
1) I had to try many times to get exported QIFs of more than 0-40 KB. Restored back-up files worked better.
2) First conversion deleted all my checking, cash, and credit card amounts and dumped stock transactions into my checking account. When I complained to Quicken HELP, they offered to convert my files at $150 each.
3) Investment prices were WILDLY off by plus or minus millions.
4) Instructions for entering prices said "in Portfolio, type the date, enter the price, and Record." However if I typed, for example, 12/31/99 and entered the correct price, it recorded as of the current date (ex.) 10/15/02. Website and help materials don't mention entering prices under DETAILS. Further, if I typed in a past date, it still showed my portfolio as of Today. I had to click-click-click the calendar beside the date field.
5) I started hand-entering investment prices for each year, 1993-2002 and discovered prices from 1993 or 2002 for stocks I'd owned 95-98. If the dates were correct, the prices had no relation whatsoever to reality.
6) I'd get a Mac file corrected one day, but when I re-opened it, all my work was undone. Prices I'd laboriously entered for Stock A appeared under stock D. I'd re-enter correct information, only to have different errors show up. This went on for nearly a month.
7) If a security had changed name, I couldn't change or delete either name. I had investments where the stock was under 1 name; prices another and the Accounts list came up blank. It would have required establishing a 3rd file and hand-entering each transaction.
8) When I called Quicken Helpline to report problems, I was told I was doing it wrong or there was a wrong transaction. I cross-checked every transaction, Windows - Mac, and they were identical, but the totals were different.
If I could find an alternative to Quicken 2003/Mac I'd jump for it.

My wife and I have used Quicken for Windows for the past 7 years. We recently switched to Mac OS X, and we were thrilled that Quicken 2003 was pre-installed. Mac OS X is fabulous, but this program has been a nightmare. It is slow, locks up the entire system (which is hard to do with Mac OS X) and VERY buggy. The interface is much less intuitive (pardon the pun) than Quicken for Windows. It also lacks some of the features that we took for granted because they had been in Quicken for Windows for years. Avoid this program at all costs--we're plugging our PC back in so we can start using Quicken for Windows again.

Intuit claimed that her "Quicken 2003 for Mac" can serve as my financial organizer. I believed and acquired it. But what happened was the unexpected. The software worked fine for a couple of months and then went haywire! It is disorganizing my data now. My figures joggle up and down, day and night. I have made all sorts of adjustments without any relief. All other software (and hardware) on my system have no problems. I haven't seen anything like this!
Had it been that I didn't keep my data protecting passwords secret, I would have suspected people of messing around with my stuff. I'm just tired of correcting all my old data each time I add a new one. Intuit has not been of great help. It's time to fire this 'Chicken', sorry, I mean "Quicken".
The two stars I scored it is just because it served me well for the first seven weeks: before it went nuclear!

I've been using 2000 for Mac since it came out and was very happy with it. Since upgrading to 2003, I've had nothing but trouble. Downloading transactions is a nightmare with constant freezes. There are phantom transactions that don't match anything and then disappear. Select one transaction and you can't unselect it. Select one transaction and you frequently have only the option of accepting all not just the one highlighted. Matches that read exactly the same in the downloads and register are not marked as matches so if you accept, you have a double entry. Opening and closing the window doesn't help. Restart the program and your downloaded transactions look the same but the balance in your register is suddenly doubled! I want to go back to 2000, but now that won't version connect to my bank. DO NOT GET 2003 FOR MAC!